MAFS is rocked by a sex scandal at a drunken remote party. Making matters worse? Threats to monetise it with Etsy merch. James Weir recaps.
The annual Married At First Sight retreat gets destroyed on Monday night by a sex scandal that includes public humiliation, relentless mocking, and threats to manufacture Etsy merch bedazzled with the word FINGERBANG.
The MAFS freaks are unlocked from Trash Tower and set loose inside a luxury country estate that some unsuspecting Airbnb owner is about to regret listing.
At the end of the getaway, the property owners will need to hire one of those biohazard decontamination squads that are usually tasked with cleaning up meth labs and murder scenes.
The retreat begins innocently enough, with Rachel sharing some big news about her relationship with Steven. She finally convinced him to brush his hair? No.
“Our intimacy levels increased. We have not banged yet, but it’s really exciting,” she gushes. “I’m not gonna go into detail.”
Champagne glasses clink. Congratulations all around.
Then Bec skulks out of the shadows and approaches Steven.
“I’m just so excited that you fingerbanged,” she says.
Steven looks horrified. We’re sure he barely even understands what that word means. But he knows he does not like it. And why is Bec just assuming that’s what happened? A lot of F-words have been uttered on this show, but “fingerbang” is not one of them.
Still, Bec’s just getting started.
She struts into the middle of the patio and summons everyone to gather around.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” she screams.
After a glass or two of champagne, she’s feeling cocky. She wants the spotlight. In her mind, she thinks this is her time to shine – deliver an improvised comedy routine that she believes will have TV execs calling her up to host this year’s Logies.
Bec’s husband Danny – who has had a front-row seat to Bec’s many public showdowns over the past four weeks – takes a deep breath and gives his wife an unimpressed look. He can see the train already careening off the tracks.
“I wanted to call us all here tonight — it’s the first night of retreat. And we’ve had ‘I love youse’ … We’ve had a couple who I thought could not come back from the brink of hell. Annnnd … WE’VE HAD FINGERBANGS!” she yells, pivoting to point at Rachel.
The camera immediately cuts to Rachel to capture her humiliation, soundtracked to howls of laughter. From the beginning of the experiment, she has made her insecurities about s*x and intimacy abundantly clear. And now, just as she’s getting some confidence, it’s turned into a punchline.
As Rachel’s eyes well up, the group tells Bec to apologise.
“It was meant to be a bitta fun!” she squawks in retaliation.
“Well it’s not funny,” Rachel replies. “I shared with you guys that we took intimacy to a new level which was really important to Steven and I and you just made a joke of it.”
Immediately, Bec gets defensive – framing herself as the innocent victim while yelling put-downs at Rachel.
“Nahhh, I didn’t make a joke of it,” she slurs. “It’s not a joke, dahhrrrling. You’re verrry, verrrrrry quick to turn.”
Rachel doesn’t want to fight. She quietly excuses herself and goes inside.
Bec tries to rally the troops, loudly shaming and mocking Rachel, trying desperately to get the remaining freaks to side with her.
“Get over it! F**k me! She needs to calm down! She pops off so quickly! I’m over it. Look at her – goin’ nuts. She’s goin’ off-her-head-nuts right now. She needs to relax. Jesus Christ. Honestly, she’s just really hard work sometimes. She’s goin’ absolutely off her head – look at her in there …”
Bec peers through a window to watch a humiliated Rachel sobbing. The obnoxious commentary continues to flow.
“My husband is the one who encouraged your husband to fingerbang you, dahhrrrling. OK? Just calm down. I’m gonna get a T-shirt with FINGERBANG across it.”
OK, girl. But Channel 9’s gonna want a 40 per cent cut of all merch profits.
You’d think Bec might wake up the next day with some clarity. Instead, she wakes up with more amateur comedy material.
“It’s like … get a personality, will ya?” she sneers about Rachel, continuing to rally anyone who’ll listen. And surprisingly, her husband Danny’s now on board. He has somehow been brainwashed overnight and is fully supporting his wife’s campaign of mockery.
“Do ya think Steve-O wants to be cheering her up because he has fingerbanged her?” Danny says. “It should’ve made her happier. But it’s made her sadder. He’s probably thinking, ‘F**k that, I’m not gonna fingerblast her ever again’.”
Yes, Rachel overreacts to things. But “gets upset easily” and “doesn’t want strangers yelling FINGERBANG about her intimate life on national TV” are actually two different categories of sensitivity.
Even Juliette — who was called “cruel”, “vile” and “ugly” by clinical experts just last night — feels qualified to weigh in, after Bec spends the day trying to get laughs by repeatedly announcing she’s going to start screen printing FINGERBANG merch.
“Some girls are a lost cause,” she sighs, as if she’s some beacon of emotional maturity.
Sensing the tension hasn’t quite reached critical mass, producers decide the best solution is to throw fuel — ahem, tequila — on the fire by organising separate drunken girls’ and boys’ nights. What could go wrong?
At girls’ night, Bec continues her comedy tour.
“Get a personality! She’s hard work — Rachel is hard work to be friends with,” she huffs quietly in a corner.
That’s when Gia decides to be helpful by revealing that Bec’s been telling everyone about her FINGERBANG merchandise empire.
It’s around now we’re treated to a supercut flashback reel of every time Bec has apologised over the past three weeks, only to immediately be offensive again. It’s a highlights reel of, well … lowlights. The point is clear: Bec keeps behaving poorly then begging for forgiveness — only to never change her ways.
Will she now take responsibility?
“Get me the f**k outta here,” she spits, storming out of the girls’ night barn.
Desperate for validation, she crashes boys’ night, screaming “DANIEL!” through the shrubs like she’s fleeing a crime scene.
“You have no idea what I’ve just been through!” Bec wails to Danny. “It was just a gang up, completely.”
Huh. Last night, Bec told an upset Rachel to “get over it” and to stop being “hard work”. But apparently when Bec gets confronted, it’s a legitimate emergency.
“She’s foul, man,” Bec tells Danny, who’s now completely brainwashed.
“Grow up,” he mutters about Rachel. “Steve-O’s a charity case.”
The shared vitriol is apparently an aphrodisiac. They start dry-humping on the outdoor settee.
Post-makeout, they decide the only logical next step is to storm the barn and demand an immediate confrontation with Steven and Rachel. The mediation begins with Bec and Danny pouring scotch — because nothing says “productive conflict resolution” like adding more alcohol at midnight.
Bec immediately makes herself the victim.
“I think what hurt me tonight the most was you let everyone attack me,” she slurs at Rachel, throwing in passive-aggressive pet names. “Honey, darling, sweetie, baaaaaabe.”
It descends into another match of fingerbanging. No! Sorry! POINTING! Finger-POINTING!
Then she drops a grenade. She mentions having a secret conversation with Steven earlier that day.
“He said, ‘Ya know what, Bec? I really love you. And I really love Rach’,” she stammers.
Rachel’s face drops.
“Why are you talking to my husband off camera? Did I know about that? No!” she says, now paranoid that her own husband is trash talking her.
I think for now it’s best if everyone just keeps their words — and fingers — to themselves.